Canon gambit to step up India play

Digital imaging company Canon India Ltd has chalked out a blueprint to boost sales and expand footprint in the country. The gambit includes initiatives like expanding its distribution network, lowering prices of some of its products, improving after-sales services and stepping up its promotional activities.

Alok Bharadwaj, senior vice president, Canon India, told DNA that the company would initiate a number of strategies to stimulate the camera market in India, even as it presses for increasing the household penetration of its cameras.

To start with, the company is planning to jack up its distribution network. By 2011, it aims to have over 2,000 outlets across 500 towns. Canon currently sells its digital cameras through 1,558 outlets across 200 towns.

“There are about 600 million digital cameras worldwide with the household penetration at 30%. In the US, Europe and Japan, the household penetration levels are at 79%, 67% and 72%, respectively. While China has 52 million camera users with 16% penetration, India has only 5 million digital camera users with household penetration of 2.3%,” Bharadwaj said, adding that the challenge and potential were in enhancing the household penetration level of the category.

“We need to convince more people that camera selling is a good business opportunity, we need to have at least 10, 000 camera selling outlets in the country, but this will happen only with an increase in demand,” he said.

The company is also planning to ramp up its after-sales service by opening more service centres. The company recently added four level-4 master service centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata and five level-3 franchise centres. It now plans to have at least 15 service centres by the end of 2009.

Canon will roll out consumer and channel partner programmes and cut prices by 12% on some of its products. “We are using strategic entry level price points of Rs 7, 995 and Rs 10, 995 in order to make our products more affordable,” Bharadwaj said.
“To promote sales, we have placed about 117 trained promoters in various outlets across the country,” Bharadwaj said.

Canon has also collated an online entry of all the 1,558 retailers in order to understand how its sales were faring. Apart from these direct initiatives, Canon is banking on indirect means to grow business. It has rolled out a programme called ‘Canon League’ for its channel partners that would classify them as platinum, gold, silver or bronze, and reward them accordingly, based on their performances.

For consumers, the company has started online portals for enhancing photo culture. “We already have 25, 000 consumers registered on the consumer portal and about 8,000 on the professional front. We are banking on them and engaging them with photo contests and educational programmes.”